Andrew (Andy) S Grove

Andrew S. Grove is the chairman of Intel Corp. He served the firm as president from 1979 to 1987, when he replaced Gordon Moore as CEO. During Grove's eleven-year tenure at the helm of Intel, he orchestrated the firm's pivotal shift from memory chips to microprocessors and grew Intel into the world's leading microprocessor maker, as well as one of the most profitable manufacturers on the globe. In May of 1998, Grove was succeeded as CEO by Craig Barrett. As chairman, Grove continues to work at Intel on a regular basis and remains an active participant in the firm's shift from central processing units (CPUs) to networking technology, including flash memory chips and cell phone processors, and Internet services, such as World Wide Web hosting.

A native of Budapest, Hungary, Grove earned his undergraduate degree in chemical engineering from City College of New York and his doctorate degree from the University of California at Berkeley. In 1967, Grove took a position as an assistant director in the research and development laboratory of Fairchild Semiconductor. The following year, when Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore established NM Electronics—later renamed Intel, from the first syllables of "integrated electronics"—Grove helped the partners secure an office and set up manufacturing facilities. His official title was vice president of operations. Although Grove was not technically a founder of the firm, he was an instrumental player from the start, according to Fortune writer Brent Schlender. "It was he who masterminded Intel's pivotal 11th-hour marketing victory of Motorola to get the contract to supply microprocessors for IBM's landmark PC in 1979. Six years later, he was the one who made the gutsy and prescient decision to pull Intel out of the memory chip business, firing 6,000 employees in the process, and to focus the company on more lucrative microprocessors."

While driving Intel's growth as a CPU manufacturer, Grove also continued to teach at Stanford and published several books, including Physics and Technology of Semiconductor Devices, a textbook used by many university professors after it was published in 1967; High Output Management, first published in 1983; One-on-One with Andy Grove, first published in 1987; and Only the Paranoid Survive, published in 1996. Grove also wrote several articles for Fortune, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal . Time magazine named him "Man of the Year" in 1997; that year, he also earned Industry Week 's "Technology Leader of the Year" award and CEO magazine's "CEO of the Year" distinction. By then, more than 80 percent of all personal computers (PCs) housed Intel CPUs, which were the fastest on the market.

Grove stepped aside for Craig Barrett just as personal computer growth began to slow. Although the Internet revolution played a major role in fueling Intel's success as growing numbers of consumers purchased PCs to access the Internet, it also eventually sparked technological developments that offered consumers alternative means of accessing the Internet. As a result, Intel began to reposition itself as a networking technology and Internet services provider. Although it was his successor who oversaw nearly $8.5 billion in acquisitions of communications and networking enterprises and the launch of World Wide Web hosting services, Grove continued to help steer the firm he is credited for parlaying into an industry powerhouse.